Hot Hot Jazz

Bill hasn’t been feeling so great lately. I don’t know, it could have something to do with the open sewer lines throughout the city. And that means Junia, his girlfriend, is staying at home taking care of him. Kay and Pavani (the Australian doctor tandem) along with Yorst (the Dutch improv comedian) decided to take a trip out of Havana. That left me alone among the Yuma’s (rich tourists) that I knew. That mean the only person around to accompany me out was Yanet.

We decided to get together and decided to go to a little jazz café I’d heard good things about. It wasn’t quite the Buena Vista Social Club but it was bad, and by bad I mean really fucking good. Say what you want about Cuba but I haven’t heard a single bad note while I’ve been down here. These people got rhythm.

The weird thing about Cuban night life is that no Cuban can afford to enjoy it. That is unless of course some Yuma comes along and decided to treat them. Yanet is a musician herself and lives a very cush life by Cuban standards (she even has an iPod), but even she had never been inside this place. The music was hot as expected. Two great bands and a Lenny Kravitz look-alike and it all sounded soooo good. But after 2 hours and several mojitos we’d had enough.

We decided to take a walk down the Malcon (the seawall that protects Havana). It was a perfect Caribbean night. The Florida Strait was at peace, Orion’s belt hung directly over us, and Key West was a short 90 mile rickety raft ride to the north. But really we might have just as well been on another planet for all the difference it made.

She asked me what the heck I was doing in Cuba. Well I tried to explain to her that I just needed some time away from life to figure some stuff out. Work stopped being exciting for me and I was hoping bumming around for a while would help me figure out what was next. But it wasn’t just work, it was everything. Life was just…blech.

She told me about all the different ideas running through her head. Finding another band to join or maybe starting a hair salon or there was that idea about a selling designer clothes. But she lived in Cuba and none of that was possible without leaving her home.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I had all the opportunity in the world and no passion to take advantage of it. She was full of passion, but as a Cuban had no hope. As we sat and watched the waves crash on the shore I told her that when I left the US I was really just hoping to have a couple nights like this.